This chapter describes a catalog librarian’s experience with an academic library’s digital collection initiative. The author discusses how the library handled technical challenges and established policies and procedures during the process of creating its first digital collection. The effects of external pressures from consortial requirements and organizational change are also discussed. The author describes technical decisions specific to the first project and more general technical issues like customization decisions and decisions about filenaming convention. The processes involved in establishing selection criteria and rights and permissions policies are described. The author also provides a brief overview of three subsequent digital projects. The author concludes by speculating on how the library’s digital presence will grow in the future.

Introduction

Lovejoy Library at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville (SIUE) entered the universe of searchable digitized collections in 2008. We encountered several issues along the way to completing our seminal project. There were technical challenges to be met, and we had to establish procedures and policies. We also encountered external pressures due to our reliance upon consortial services and as a result of organizational changes at the University. This chapter is a narrative of this experience and a speculation about the future.

In 2006-2007, Lovejoy Library administration took the first steps toward establishing a digital projects initiative by forming a CONTENTdm committee and acquiring access to CONTENTdm software as a member of the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI). The software is installed and maintained on CARLI’s server. Two Lovejoy staff members received training in the use of CONTENTdm; however, neither staff member was empowered with a mandate to create a digital collection. The initiative essentially stalled. When I joined the University as the Library’s first catalog and metadata librarian in May of 2007, I recognized that getting Lovejoy fully engaged in the creation of digital collections was a main priority of the position. The aforementioned staff members immediately and gratefully handed their CONTENTdm workbooks over to me and notified the consortium that I was now the primary contact for coordinating the Library’s use of this software. I had never previously used CONTENTdm but became intimately familiar with it over the course of the next several months. Lacking training or experience, I relied heavily on support services at CARLI to effectively leverage the software. I also took a generic metadata creation workshop and studied Dublin Core.

I quickly became aware that two digitization projects were being spearheaded by two tenured faculty librarians as candidates for our initial digital collection: one somewhat aggressively as a grant project and the other more casually without the impetus of a grant. Being naïve with regard to the politics of the organization, I deferred to others who decided to give precedence to the grant-funded project. The CONTENTdm committee subsequently decided that the Library needed a process for evaluating and prioritizing potential digital collections. Perhaps this was a response to the way in which resources had been committed to the first project because of a schedule driven by external funding. Or perhaps it was the usual librarian caution that any new undertaking will grow to unmanageable proportions if fed too liberally. Perhaps the desire for oversight was motivated by recognition that the shape of our accumulated digital collections over time would define the character of the Library to a significant degree, and whether this was ad hoc or directed was not a matter of chance but of choice. Whatever the reason, a digitization selection subcommittee to the collection management committee was proposed by a tenured library faculty member at the first CONTENTdm committee meeting I attended.

The digitization selection subcommittee became entwined with the Library’s vision regarding digital initiatives. The subcommittee’s charge was officially established as being the body responsible for receiving and evaluating digitization project proposals and making recommendations to the parent collection management committee regarding acceptance and prioritization of said proposals. The advisory group comprising the subcommittee included all of the library faculty administrators plus the Director of Development (essentially the marketing administrator) and the Director of Academic Computing. The subcommittee was rounded out by the Catalog and Metadata Librarian (me), the Electronic Resources Librarian, the Archivist and Special Collections Librarian (serving as chair), and whichever subject librarian was participating in a specific digitization proposal. The group resolved to create a proposal form to guide proponents in describing the subject, extent, rationale, funding, etc. of their project ideas. Selection would be accomplished by carefully evaluating the relevance of a project to the Library’s mission and the advantages a digital platform was expected to provide for the particular included items, such as wider accessibility for heavily used resources, easier use of delicate or cumbersome materials, and improved access to text-rich content through electronic searchability. Selection criteria suggested by the Northeast Document Conservation Center were incorporated into the subcommittee’s official position. The Center frames selection around three basic questions (Gertz, 2007):

Should [the materials] be digitized? Is the collection important enough, is there enough audience demand, and can sufficient value be added through digitization to make it worth the cost and effort?

May they be digitized? Does the institution have the intellectual property rights to permit legal creation and dissemination of a digital version?

Can they be digitized? Will digitization achieve the goals of the project, given the physical nature of the materials and their organization, arrangement, and description? Does the institution have the technical infrastructure and expertise to create digital files and make them available to users now and in the future?

03/21/2011

The following chapter excerpt is from the second section of Digitization in the Real World; "A Diverse Digital Landscape: Digital Collections in Public Libraries, Museums, Cultural Heritage Institutions, and Knowledge-Based Organizations." Download the entire chapter for free (PDF)or purchase the entire book online at Amazon.com.

The Research Library of the American Museum of Natural History received funding from the Metropolitan New York Library Council in 2007 to produce a web exhibit of 989 historic images. Picturing the Museum: Education and Exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History served as the prototype for a comprehensive database for the Research Library’s extensive Photographic Collection. In the larger context of the history, development, and use of the Library’s Photographic Collection, this article describes the project's conception through a self-published book produced for the Trustees’ Library Committee, the funded project and the ongoing development of the larger database. One of the internal goals and results of the Picturing the Museum project was to analyze, codify, and document local practice, policies and workflow for more efficient delivery of images to the web.

The American Museum of Natural History Photographic Collection

Founded in 1869, the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) is one of the nation’s preeminent institutions for scientific research and public education. Throughout its history, the Museum has pursued joint missions of science and education. The Museum’s power to interpret wide-ranging scientific discoveries and convey them imaginatively has inspired generations of visitors to its grand exhibition halls and educated its visitors about the natural world and the vitality of human culture.

The Museum collections include over 32 million objects and specimens relating to anthropology, zoology, paleontology and the physical sciences. From the collected stories, clothing and material culture of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast to the dinosaur eggs unearthed in Mongolia, from meteorites brought back from Greenland on a wooden sailing ship by Robert Peary to one of the most comprehensive sets of fossil horses ever assembled, the breadth and variety of the collections is astonishing.

Illustrating the work of the Museum scientists and staff are over 1.5 million black and white negatives, color transparencies, lantern slides and photographic prints held in the AMNH Research Library. The majority of these photographs were taken by Museum explorers and scientists who documented their field work. At the same time, they photographed the local environment and the people who lived there. The physical growth of the Museum was recorded by staff photographers who also photographed the work of the exhibition and education departments. These images are requested by researchers, students, educators, and professionals from around the world for academic and general publication, educational broadcast and distribution, artists’ reference and personal use.

The dissemination of this extraordinary Photographic Collection can be traced directly to Museum founder Albert Bickmore, one of the earliest and most enthusiastic advocates of visual education. Bickmore’s lantern slide lectures were so successful that a new and larger theater was built in 1900 to accommodate the lines of teachers awaiting admission. To expand the Museum’s educational mission beyond its walls, Bickmore created a lantern slide lending library of over 140,000 slides. The slide library formed the basis of the Natural Science Study Collections that were delivered to schools throughout New York State. (see image above)

In addition to the slides, the Museum delivered specimens and, later, model dioramas accompanied by lectures prepared by the Museum’s educational and scientific staff. Bickmore’s initiative foreshadowed the digital distribution of images by over a century. It is now possible to create worldwide access to the Collection and the public has come to expect to be able to find images online. Organizing, describing and digitizing a photographic collection of this size, however, is an enormous undertaking.

This chapter presents a case study of Hudson River Valley Heritage, a decentralized collaborative digitization effort coordinated by the Southeastern New York Library Resources Council (SENYLRC). The case study documents the journey of a network of small organizations with limited resources and limited digitization experience in developing an online digital repository of historical materials housed in libraries and cultural heritage organizations in an eight country region in New York. The intent of the chapter is to describe the process-- from inception, through planning to full implementation--and share what was learned for those who might be considering similar ventures.

Introduction

Libraries have always been about sharing--providing their user communities with access to information though a network of shared resources. The digital age has made sharing possible on a much wider scale than ever imagined. With these new opportunities comes the need for enhanced collaboration and an expanded notion of community. This chapter presents a case study of an effort to expand information sharing through a collaborative digitization project. The case study documents the journey of a network of small organizations with limited resources and limited digitization experience in developing an online digital repository. The intent of the chapter is to describe the process-- from inception, through planning to full implementation--and share what was learned for those who might be considering similar ventures.

Hudson River Valley Heritage (HRVH) is a collaborative digitization service coordinated by the Southeastern N.Y. Library Resources Council (SENYLRC). Several SENYLRC staff members were responsible for the conception, planning, and implementation of HRVH: John Shaloiko, Karen Starr, Patricia Carroll-Mathes, Christopher Hyzer, Tessa Killian, and Zack Spalding. I am also proud to be a member of this team as the Digital Services Librarian.

Our work would not be possible without the aid and support of a committee of regional professionals dedicated to helping move the service forward. The cultural heritage organizations that have risen to the challenge and enthusiastically learned to digitize their local history holdings make HRVH the valuable resource that it is today.

Background

SENYLRC is one of nine New York Reference and Research Library Resources Councils (“3Rs”). These multi-type library consortia, established and chartered by the NY State Board of Regents in the late 1960s, provide a variety of services to their members including continuing education, access to electronic resources, services to the health care community, consulting, information technologies, advocacy, and more recently digitization. Each New York 3Rs Council is “governed by a locally elected Board of Trustees and has substantial input from member libraries through a robust committee structure; and each receives operating and special program aid from the State of New York, along with locally generated funds.” The overriding goal of these systems is to do “collectively what their constituent libraries and library systems cannot do individually or what can be done better together” (NY3Rs Association, Inc., n.d.). It was in this spirit that HRVH was born.

SENYLRC’s mission is to support its members in the Mid-Hudson Valley in order to enrich their services and enhance access to information for their users. The council strives to achieve service excellence in libraries by:

Providing imaginative, accessible and relevant development opportunities for staff at all levels;

Becoming a focal point for the exchange of ideas, collaboration, the development of new tools and the promotion of the transforming power of libraries.

The Hudson River Valley of New York is one of America’s most historic locales. HRVH provides free online access to historical materials from digital collections contributed by public, academic and special libraries, archives, museums, historical societies and other cultural heritage organizations in the Mid-Hudson Valley region of New York State. HRVH documents the history of this eight-county region from the early colonial period to recent decades and includes photographs, manuscripts, clippings, cookbooks, scrapbooks, 3-D objects, yearbooks, oral histories, maps and newspapers.

The success of HRVH results from the effort and enthusiasm of a network of people committed to its growth. The roles and responsibilities for the development of HRVH are shared among SENYLRC staff, the organizations that contribute their unique resources, and an advisory committee of dedicated professionals. Participating organizations are responsible for the entire digitization workflow with generous help and support from the HRVH team at SENYLRC. The Council provides the technical infrastructure, access to CONTENTdmÒ digital collection software, equipment, documentation, and training. It is this model of collaboration and shared responsibilities that make HRVH a successful digitization service for the region. There was very little digitization expertise in the region when this journey began a decade ago and everyone involved had a lot to learn. At times it seemed like a “two steps forward one step back” process. HRVH is now a thriving digital service as well as a community of trained professionals working towards a common goal of providing unparalleled access to our region’s rich history.

This chapter discusses the experiences of creating a medium-sized digital collection of the earliest photographs from Colorado State University’s Historic Photograph Collection. The entire collection of 500,000 photographs chronicles the history of Colorado State University, the city of Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain National Park. Digitizing the first phase of this vast collection included capturing 5500 images from glass plate negatives, 750 images from magic lantern slides, and 7500 images from gelatin nitrate prints. These formats were chosen because they are the oldest and most fragile. The project was not without challenges, including utilizing untrained staff and students, coping with equipment problems, and creating avenues of communication to more than 40 people involved in the creation of the collection. This chapter will discuss these challenges and how we worked to resolve them.

Introduction

Beginning in the late 1990s, Colorado State University Libraries (CSUL) started large-scale digitization activities in partnership with the Colorado Digitization Project (CDP). The first of these was the Warren and Genevieve Garst Photographic Collection of wild animal photographs donated to CSUL and digitized with CDP funding (http://lib.colostate.edu/wildlife/). The Sidney Heitman Germans from Russia Collection was another early digitization project (http://lib.colostate.edu/gfr/index.html) funded by the CDP. These projects, and a series of smaller ad hoc projects over the next three years, were created following the CDP’s best practices guidelines and gave a few staff the opportunity to learn digitization.

In 2006 CSUL received the University Historic Photograph Collection (UHPC) a collection of 500,000 photographs documenting the history of Colorado State University, Fort Collins, and Rocky Mountain National Park. The collection came from the University’s Office of Instructional Services and was given to CSUL’s Archives and Special Collections Department with the understanding that it would be preserved and access given to a wider audience through digitization. Planning for the digitization of the first phase began in early 2007, as did creation of a finding aid for the earliest images in the collection, which included glass plate negatives, magic lantern slides, and gelatin nitrate prints from cellulose nitrate negatives. These photographs are also the most fragile materials in the collection. The goal was to digitize approximately 5,500 glass plate negatives, 750 lantern slides, and 7500 gelatin prints.

Although we had no budget line dedicated solely for digitization, our work did have the support of both the Colorado State University (CSU) and CSUL’s administrative teams. Funds were provided by the Libraries’ administrative team to purchase digital scanners, including an archival-quality overhead scanner used for later archival digitization projects. Administrative support provided extra funding in the project when we needed to hire students and acquire additional server space to house our digital master files.

Literature Review

Of the recent literature addressing digitization, the focus is often on the technical and preservation-related issues that arise following the creation of a digital collection; less of the recent literature focuses on the staffing issues encountered when creating digital collections. Boock and Vondracek (2006) found that when institutions begin digitization activities they often add these tasks to staff responsibilities rather than hire new staff dedicated to digitization. In a 2005 survey of ARL libraries, they found a majority of the responding institutions capitalized on the existing knowledge and skills of staff, encouraging current positions to evolve rather than hiring new digitization staff, as was the case at CSUL. Boock continues the discussion, focusing on how the Oregon State University Libraries (OSUL) reassigned several staff positions to a new digitization production unit, initially using staff for scanning, quality control reviews, and metadata creation using a metadata schema (Boock, 2008). OSUL relies on student employees for almost all of its digital imaging and metadata assignment, performing no quality control reviews on their work. In examining the organizational implications of digitizing, Sutton (2004) recalls how early digitization efforts were seen as temporary endeavors, requiring the temporary re-assignment of staff.

D’Andrea and Martin (2001), reporting on digitization workflows at Temple University, discuss utilizing part-time student staff to supplement the work of digitization staff. D’Andrea and Martin note, and our experiences confirm, there are positives and negatives in hiring students to work on digitization projects. The authors recommend hiring students whose interests match the project, not just those who apply for the job, and fully informing students about the nature of the work.